Bij 3DGPU staat nu ook een verhaaltje van een Creative mannetje over de fill rate van de GeForce (check ook dit nieuwsbericht). Hieronder een paar wijze woorden uit zijn speech.

There is no standard agreed upon method of quoting fill rates. Actual fill rate is is dependent upon so many factors that people have resorted to simplifying the question to one number. Let me list some of the factors that impact ACTUAL fill rate

- the type of pixel/ 16 or 32 bit
- size of the triangle being rendered, the size of the texture
- the kind of filtering you do
- cache coherency
- to Z or not to Z, the list goes on an on.

So the best way to determine fill rate is to MEASURE it. Theoretical numbers are just that-- theory. In fact, with some approaches I could generate "infinite effective fill rate" which would not be bandwidth limited. Theoretical fill rates are only an indicator of system performance, the real measure is how the system performs and we tell that by plugging it it and running some games. After all, ask yourself which is more fun: playing Quake III at 60Fps or reading a spec? So on to those calculations.

The calculations are a simplistic description of ONE WAY of doing 3D. Fetch a texel, fetch a Z, write a pixel, write a Z. Fortunately, no advanced controller operates this way. Does the controller ALWAYS have to fetch a texel? Nope sometimes it has it in cache ( the bigger the cache the higher the probability the texel will be in the cache ) do you always have to read a Z? Nope, in some systems you can skirt this issue as well. Because of NDA's I can't tell you how Nvidia or 3Dfx or S3 or anybody actually gets more bandwidth out of a system, all I can say is that the simplistic calculations are utterly beside the point.

Meer over deze situatie vind je hier.

Bij The Guru 3D is een review te vinden van de Gigabyte GA-660 Plus. Dit is een .22micron gebakken TNT2 (ipv .25micron) waardoor de core/memory clock standaard op 170/180 is gezet. Na wat tweaken draait ie op 180/190Mhz. Hieronder een hap uit de review.

The Ga-660 is the fastest TNT-2 based videocard that we have tested yet! Good driver options, high resolutions, incredible performance, good software, nice game-bundle, 2D/3D 32Bit, D3D/OpenGL, 2048x2048 texture mapping, AGP 4x support, etc. etc. But what about the price then ? Well, the card will be competitive with other high-end cards. Most likely it will compete with Voodoo 3 3000 and of course TNT-2, Ultra and Matrox's G400 Max. The selling price will be about 160$ and that includes the game-pack. For that kind of money you strike us as an excellent deal for you fellow gamers.

The GA-660 Plus runs very stable, as with all cards we test, it had been running continuously for 24 hours (we loop some 3D time demo's). No flaws occurred and the chip does not run hot due to the Dual Cooling System, compared to the Voodoo3 3000 that's a real advantage. I overclocked the card with ease towards 180/190 MHz and it ran excellent. On 185c/194m the card will halt.

Lees de rest hier.

Tom van Tom's Hardware Guide heeft een review in elkaar geknutseld rondom de ATI Rage Fury Pro. Dit is een opgefokte versie van de Rage 128 met een core/memory clock van 125/143MHz. Hieronder een gedeelte uit de review.

ATI traditionally has brought us a well-rounded graphics card that consists of acceptable 3D performance, leading edge DVD playback, video encoding hardware/software, digital flat panel support and the ability to ship in quantity. With this latest release, we are proven once again that ATI has all these abilities and there's hardly any doubt that the OEMs of this world will continue to rely on their proven graphics partner. However, supplying the performance that the competitors reached already 8 months ago won't make it easy for the single Rage 128 Pro cards in the retail market. People who want a perfect multimedia-bundle can't go wrong with the new ATi-product, performance hungry 3D-gamers however will rather wait for NVIDIA's GeForce256 or for 'Aurora'. With the release of GeForce256 we'll see the prices of TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra drop and the expected performance levels rise. When I asked ATi about this, they assured me that they would keep the pricing (of the Fury Pro) in competition with the TNT2.[break]Verder heeft Tom het ook nog even over de ATi Rage Fury MAXX, helaas niet echt hete info.[/break] So where does that put the Fury MAXX as far as performance? Theoretically this gives a 500MPixel/sec fill rate and 4GB/sec memory bandwidth. Although we're not allowed to publish numbers, we'll give you an idea of where the Fury MAXX sits as far as performance. From tests that we've run here in the lab, the benchmark scores in Expendable were some of the highest we've ever seen while in OpenGL (Quake Arena/Descent3) we saw performance numbers only topped by NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce256, which comes with the exact same fill rate (ATi quotes 480 Mpixels/s for GeForce, which is incorrect). Keep in mind this was with beta drivers, so performance may vary with the released product (should be on shelves around Christmas time). I want to also let it be known that it looked possible in future models to have a dual output from this card although it's not planned yet (think Dual Head).

Ik lees bij Riva Extreme dat Asus een PCI versie van haar V3800 TNT2 kaart gaat releasen. Hieronder wat info gejat van Riva Extreme:

Asus has formally announced their PCI TNT2 card. It seems to be a non-Ultra, it has Video-in and TV-Out up to 800x600. Asus' have above-average TV-Out I understand. And it has Turok 2 (cough) and XG2, a futuristic racing game. So, those of you who need a PCI card, you're not stuck with just the Voodoo3 2000 or ATI choices anymore. There should be 16 and 32 meg versions and you can separately upgrade to their stereoscopic glasses and DVD software.

Op de Asus website staat ook wat info.

AMD heeft (eer)gisteren een presentatie gehouden over o.a. de Athlon. JC had hier al een transcript van gepost, maar Riva Extreme heeft gelijk de hele Powerpoint presentatie online geplant. Vrij veel technische info in dit 24-pagina's tellende stuk, hieronder de intro.

A nice fellow from AMD that I know sent me this powerpoint presentation, which I promptly made netscape-compatible (well, as compatible as this page could be). It outlines many interesting things about AMD - including some surprising things like the possibilities of multiprocessing on the same die. Read on! There's 24 slides of goodness for you, and i'll let you page through it just like the presentation.

Bij FiringSquad hebben ze een artikel gedumpt over Matrox's coole DualHead feature op de G400. Je zult vertelt staan voor hoeveel dingen je deze functie kan gebruiken. Hieronder een klein gedeelte, meer vind je hier.

The benefits of dual monitors are more obvious when using graphics programs like Photoshop or spreadsheet programs. Graphic artists often need to work with gigantic sized pictures. With dual monitors, you don't need to scroll around as much. Simply stretch the window out over both monitors and you've got a super wide canvas on which to work! Are you sick of those toolbars and palettes getting in the way of your image? Drag those over to your dumping off point, the secondary display. Now you've got an unobstructed view of your images. The same ideas can be applied to spreadsheets. Accountants often have to work with large files with many columns. Drag the spreadsheet window to cover both displays and all of a sudden you can see twice as many columns as before. Don't work with spreadsheets? Well everyone uses email - drag your mail application across both screens and view multiple mailboxes all at the same time! [break]Verder hebben ze ook wat benchmarks gepost van de nieuwe TurboGL driver van Matrox. Deze nieuwe ICD geeft een asociale performance boost mits je een P3 of Athlon systeem hebt:[/break] The performance gain from TurboGL is nothing short of eye popping - my personal system with a P3 450, 128MB of RAM, and a vanilla G400 jumped from 53 fps to 76 fps in Quake 3, after installing TurboGL drivers. And you can see how a P3 600 jumped up about 50% in framerate at the lower resolutions where G400 was lagging behind before. The comparison tests show G400 series cards actually blowing the doors off the competition! The numbers speak for themselves - until the GeForces and Savage 2000s arrive, the G400 Max looks like it's the card to beat if you run a P3 or Athlon system. Not only are you getting Matrox's superior image quality in 2D and 3D, but you're also getting great 3D framerate in OpenGL now, and the luxury of bump mapping and DualHead. Have your cake and eat it too!

Tim Sweeny van Unreal Tournament heeft wat info los gelaten over welke GeForce 256 features de game zal ondersteunen en wat voor performance winst het zal opleveren. Dit is de soep:

We'll be taking advantage of the GeForce256's DXTC / S3TC texture compression, and also their palettized texture support as soon as they expose it in their Direct3D drivers. Their hardware supports palettes, but the initial retail drivers don't expose it. Paletted textures reduce texture memory usage by 2X and theoretically improve texture management performance by 2X. We won't be supporting hardware T&L initially when Unreal Tournament ships, but T&L clearly rocks, so you never know what the future holds.

Ik lees bij GamePC dat FIC's SD-11 Athlon plaat en de Athlon 650 processor incompatible zijn. FIC is bezig met een BIOS update voor dit probleem.

After talking with FIC, they've let us know that their SD-11 motherboard is incompatible with AMD's Athlon 650 processor. After testing various combinations at our offices, we found the processors to randomly reboot when loading up Windows, and sometimes not booting at all. GamePC has withdrawn this combination from our website until a workaround has been issued. FIC has let us know that there will be a new BIOS out to fix this problem soon. The SD-11 still runs perfectly fine in Athlon 500, 550, and 600 MHz processor configurations.

Bij Sharky Extreme is een review te vinden van het Soyo SY6BA+ IV moederbord. Nieuw in 'versie IV' is onplank UDMA/66 support. Hieronder wat info over zijn overklokbaarheid.

The SY6BA+ IV, also like the SY6BA+ III, is a strong overclocking platform for CPUs.

It offers a great variety of FSB speeds, voltage adjustment, manual selection of the AGP bus speed divider and hardware temperature monitoring.

It was very stable at the higher bus speeds, managing to POST and bootup Win98 at a speed of 144MHz when using EMS HSDRAM DIMMs.

We'd like to see Soyo allow for greater than a maximum voltage increase of "10%" for the CPU as 2.2 volts often isn't enough to explore the very upper limits of a CPU's overclocking range.

Other than this lone complaint the SY6BA+ IV is a great overclocking platform that excels whether or not the user owns a Celeron or a Pentium III processor.

Lees de rest van het verhaaltje hier.

Eric van Fastgraphics heeft een klein filmpje (~500K) gepost waarin de mogelijkheden van Cube Environment Mapping worden gedemonstreerd:

Het effect wordt pas duidelijk wanneer je dit in beweging ziet! Haal 'm hier op: 145.89.88.199/98_079/fok/bb/geforce-demo.rm.

Beta News meldt dat er voor gebruikers van de 3dfx Voodoo3 3500TV nieuwe drivers klaar liggen. Hieronder de info met links:

What's new in 1.02.18:
1. Improved stereo support
2. Fixed bug with app not recording with video settings if user had changed from defaults

Voodoo3 3500TV AGP Version 1.02.18 for Windows 98 - 2223 KB
Voodoo3 3500TV AGP Version 1.02.18 for Windows 95 - 2185 KB

Let wel op: Die Win98 drivers zijn alleen voor mensen die de WebTV geinstalleerd hebben. De rest moet de Win95 drivers met Windows 98 gebruiken.

NOTE: International users should select Windows 95 drivers. They work fine on Windows 98, but do not support WebTV which is required for use with the Windows 98 drivers.

Triest overlijdensbericht bij The Register: de Cray C90 supercomputer van het amerikaanse Wim Krollen instituut is in de hens gegaan en heeft ons voortijdig moeten verlaten :

It's official, the Cray C90 supercomputer really smokes. Well, it's worse than that actually - we're talking seriously hot technology here.

The US National Centers for Environmental Prediction published a sad note to field operatives today concluding that the C90, which caught fire on September 27th, is most definitely a write-off. This after SGI engineers arrived and shook their heads, and after a second opinion was sought. They all agreed, the Cray was Croaked.

The immediate effect is that "objective guidance beyond 10 days in the future will be unavailable for the next several weeks. Therefore, there is no objective basis for making forecasts at the 8-14 day range."

JC heeft een transcript gepost van de presentatie die AMD gisteren gaf op z'n conference call (aandeelhouders meeting ofzo?). Hier een paar punten:

- Wafer fab ops did terrific job, speed disti continues to go higher. 700s launched with IBM and Compaq. So far, all Athlons at quarter micron. Demoed 800MHz this week at uPF based on 180nm process. In production on 180nm and expect first revenues 1999 Q4. By months end, all 0.25um Athlons cease production. Expect 750MHz 180nm Athlons in Q1. Pleased with progress in tech and impact on clock speed. Last Q, 75% of all flavors of AMD processors were 400MHz or faster. Q4, virtually all will be 400MHz and up.

Q: What is happening on PC133 SDRAM given Intel has Camino (with Rambus). Will PC133 have an impact on high end? Will AMD have 133MHz chipsets? --

A: Rambus delay is a real benefit to AMD. Clear that PC133 will be mainstream in marketplace. AMD chipsets currently fastest "performance platform solution" with Athlon, VIA's making PC133 chipsets for Athlon (with AGP4x). Athlon will be highest performance platform in the marketplace --

Q: Update us on customer list for Athlon. ANyone other than Compaq and IBM? Also, update us on Dresden schedule. --

A: We don't announce customers until they announce, do have a few though. Dresden, pleased with progress. Started first Cu180nm ("Hip6L"?). Have made 180nm Cu Athlons in research labs. Definitely 1GHz by end of 2000. Revenues for Hip6L Dresden in Q2. Dresden is 100% Copper.

Q: VIA PC133 chipset available in Q499 or 2000 Q1? --

A: Expect available for shipment in Q4.

Idiot van Ace's Hardware heeft z'n reaktie gepost op de onwaarschijnlijk hoge SPEC benchmarks die JC gisteren op z'n site prikte (zie dit nieuwsbericht):

First the L2 seems to be 8way although we were having some sources talking about 4way, and I hope Intel would clear this bit up by releasing the uPF presentation like AMD. Second the 25 SPECfp_base95 seems legit as PC watch Japan again cited this number, and is reported as being part of the uPF presentation by Intel.

Now for people questioning is the number possible, we can try to take a look from the architecture and highest known SPECfp95 from a few well known architecture. First we look at the 21264, this CPU have 2 pipelined FP excution units and 2 load store units, and quad issue in its front end. Then we look at the P6 architecture with 1 issue port to the pipelined FPU, one load, one store and mostly a 2 decode/issue in the front end. Lastly we look at the K6-3 with a single issue FPU thats have a throughput of 2 cycles, 1 load/store unit and being a 2 issue machine. Now if we assume the excution units are feed to the same level and memory latencies are being hide by prefetch, OOE, or deep buffering/cache we can adjust the MHz linearly and same with throughput. Now look at K6-3 450's top Specfp95 score known (8.33 from c't) and multiply it by 6/4.5 = 1.3333.... to adjust for MHz and multiply by 2 to adjust for throughput we get 22.2. So this shows if we can feed P6 600MHz 's FPU units as good as we can do for a K6-3 450 we should be able to get at least 22 out. Now look at 21264 700's score of 68.1 and multiply by 6/7 and divide by two to account for the two unit present in 21264 we get 29 which is higher than the 25. Of course since the Rops in each CPU isn't the same and how busy can one keep the excution units at depend on the instruction set also this is a very crude estimate only aimed at showing that P6 core do indeed have enough excution units to get the score shown. This of course will also show that the offdie L2 the P3s have is not feeding the core very well and memory subsystem might be the deciding factor for all the future CPUs.

Note that besides the very low latency ondie L2s the new scores is also affected by the new compilers that seems to use prefetch to hide the memory latencies and keep the excution units as busy as possible. [break] Zie net dat JC een follow-up op z'n eigen posting heeft neer geprikt: [/break] Confirmation from SI that the impressively high Coppermine performance numbers are partially so high because the compiler was changed to take advantage of ISSE instructions. The poster (an Intel guy himself, I believe) speculated (very wisely) that it's likely ISSE prefetching optimizations, and not actual optimizing for SIMD (once again, since the phenominal majority of specfp uses double precision floating point, neither SSE nor 3DNow! SIMDs apply). Now, I'm tempted to go into ponder mode ... see, I'm pretty sure that spec rules say that this compiler has to be freely available to be published officially. And the Athlon happens to support the prefetching instructions from ISSE (as well as separate 3DNow! prefetching instructions). So I'll assume that it can be used with this compiler (unless Intel's compiler turns off sse support "if(CPUID) ne 'IntelInside'"). I'm interested in finding out the timings (you know, latencies and such) of the prefetching instructions in both the Coppermine (should be same as in Katmai PIII) and the Athlon. See, if the timings are identical, you can probably expect to see some strong performance boosts with an SSE'd compiler on Athlon. It the timings are different, then you'll likely see some improvement, but it'd probably get muted. Oh, BTW, the same fellow put up some estimations of how much prefetching would help the Katmai on 133MHz bus (PIII-600B).

PC's bewegen zich steeds verder richting de consumer electronics markt, zo analyseert C|Net. Uiteraard hebben we dit allemaal te danken aan Saint Steve, die wrede man die handelt in militair wapentuig (check de PowerMac G4 propaganda spotjes) :

Apple's faster and cheaper iMacs are likely to be a hit with consumers. But more importantly for Apple, the machines represent the latest step in the computer maker's drive to become a premier consumer electronics company.

Within their translucent cases, Apple has incorporated software and hardware capable of "desktop video publishing," as the company calls it. The two top models of iMacs, dubbed DV and DV Special Edition, come with a DVD-ROM drive, special movie editing software designed by Apple, and high-speed, plug-and-play connections for digital video camcorders called FireWire.

Apple said there are already about 7 million camcorders with FireWire connections on the market. This means there's a large group of consumers who can easily tape events and dump video into the computer for editing and playback, and then store the edited material back on tape again.

"I think its going to be the next big thing," said Steve Jobs, interim CEO of Apple, in a speech Tuesday.

[...] Eventually, Apple thinks it can democratize broadcasting in the same way it spurred the advent of desktop publishing some 20 years ago. Besides offering a complete package for video editing, Apple eventually wants to help people create their own television stations by reselling them transmission time for broadcasting everything from garage-band concerts to cooking lessons.

Hail to the wereldverbeterende Steve, baby!

Ook AMD gaat handelen in kleurtjes (schijnt tegenwoordig popi te zijn, Steve en zijn vrienden bij IBM en Compaq doen het ook al), zo bericht News.com:

Advanced Micro Devices will swing into the fancy computer movement this month when computer manufacturers begin to release design-minded, colorful computers based around the company's chips.

The new PCs, the latest attempt to capitalize on the color PC craze, will be aimed at style-conscious consumers on a budget. The systems will sport colored, translucent cases and novel designs, including an all-in-one design similar conceptually to Apple's iMac.

[...] Some of the new AMD-based systems will be relatively inexpensive because they will come with K6-2 chips, the company's budget chip, said Stephen Lapinski, director of product marketing at AMD. Some manufacturers, for instance, will release a small, ovalized K6-2 PC designed by AMD. The oval computers come with a CD-ROM drive and two USB ports, but lack built-in floppy drives, he added.

[...] Meanwhile, the names of manufacturers for the fancy AMD systems have not been released; however, Packard Bell NEC is expected to be one of the companies coming out with systems in this vein, sources said.

Aah, een Pack-it'n Hell met een K6-2 proc, wat wil je nog minder!

Gamespot heeft een artikeltje neer gemikt over de ATi Aurora, de SLI-achtige techniek die ATi gebruikt in de gisteren aangekondigde Rage Fury MAXX. Gamespot heeft een paar voorlopige benchmarks van de kaart:

So how does it perform? Even though it was still in beta stage, the board, demonstrated to us by ATI, tore through the benchmarks. (Bear in mind that these results weren't extrapolated in a controlled environment.) While running Rage's Expendable timedemo on a Pentium III 600MHz, the MAXX scored the following:

- 1024x768x16 = 59.1 frames per second
- 1024x768x32 = 55.0 frames per second
- 1600x1200x32 = 30.9 frames per second

The first result, run at 1024x768 at a 16-bit color depth, is quite a bit better than we've seen from the Nvidia TNT2 Ultra's score. Even more pleasing was the second score, which was run at the same resolution but at 32-bit color depth. We expected a significant drop in the overall performance, not just four frames per second. But the real shocker was the MAXX's performance at 1600x1200x32, a setting that'll bring most cards to their knees. Current top-of-the-line video cards score somewhere in the low- to mid-teens at that high of a setting - if they're lucky. The score of 30.9 is very respectable, indeed. ATI says that the MAXX's fillrate tops out at 500 million pixels per second (as compared with the GeForce 256's 480Mps), which would explain its shining performance, and claims that it's currently equivalent in Direct3D performance to Nvidia's GeForce 256 and about 5 - 20 percent slower in OpenGL. "We've only been working with the OpenGL driver for two weeks", ATI director of visual products Alan McCann told GameSpot News. "By the time the MAXX reaches production, we'll have significantly improved OpenGL performance."

Firingsquad heeft direkt na de bekendwording van het nieuws dat mijnheer Ballard (de CEO van 3dfx) is opgestart een mailtje richting Brian Burke afgevuurd. Hier een hap uit dit korte interview:

Did any specific events trigger the resignation? Perhaps his comments back at the end of July that Voodoo 4 would come out in October?

It is not related to any specific event or comments. Greg simply feels that his job here is done. His expertise lies in the retail sector and as a sales and marketing leader. We brought him on to take us public and to help guide us from being a chip company selling to board companies to a board company selling in retail. We are currently the dominant player in retail and have been since Voodoo Graphics were introduced in 1997. There is no disputing that 3dfx has been successful moving into the retail market under Greg's leadership, however as companies mature, what they need from their leaders change. Greg realizes this and is doing what he feels is best for 3dfx and him. This was a voluntary decision on the behalf of Greg Ballard and will be an amiable departure. He is doing what he thinks is best for him and 3dfx.

*Kaboem*. NEC, de grooste chipboer van Japan, heeft bekend gemaakt dat het tijdelijk z'n Rambus produktie plat zal leggen, zodat er space vrijkomt voor het bakken van SDRAM chippies. News.com brengt ons dit leuke / interessante / trieste nieuws:

NEC has already switched production lines in Southern Japan and Scotland to produce synchronous DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) chips rather than the Direct Rambus chips--which are capable of faster data transfer than conventional computer memory chips--they were making before, said a company spokesman who asked not to be named. The company had planned to ship about 2 million Rambus chips monthly to PC makers from March.

NEC's decision comes after Intel, the world's No. 1 chipmaker, last month said it would delay for a second time a product that uses Rambus chips because of a technical problem, as previously reported by CNET News.com. [break] Toshiba doet nog wel aan Rambus, maar die produktie is bedoelt voor hun kameraden bij Sony: [/break] Toshiba, Japan's second-largest chipmaker, said Intel's chipset delay won't affect its production plans because it only makes Rambus DRAM chips for Sony's PlayStation 2 home video game player, due to go on sale early next year.

EETimes heeft een artikeltje in elkaar gedrukt met info over de Intel Itanium/Merced, AMD SledgeHammer/K8 en de extreem brute IBM Power4. Hier een paar snippers:

AMD vice president of engineering Fred Weber argued at the Microprocessor Forum here that Intel was trying to turn the X86 architecture into a "second-class citizen. With Itanium, is Intel trying to do something great, or just something that is hard?" he asked.

"With Sledgehammer and the X86-64 instruction set, AMD will show that X86 has viability well into the future. We will provide the best 32-bit computing platform, while providing a future path to 64 bits that solves the primary problem: access to larger memory. Beyond additional memory, the enterprise world has few needs for 64-bit architectures," Weber said in an interview.

By putting two processor cores on the same die, hiking the core frequency beyond a gigahertz and using deeper pipelining, Weber said Sledgehammer will offer performance equal to or better than Itanium's, and protect customers' existing applications by running X86-based code without alteration.

AMD said it will add technical floating-point capabilities to Sledgehammer and the X86-64 instruction set. Weber said dual 32-bit and 64-bit support will be possible by "defining a mode in which all instructions act on 64-bit data."

[...] Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64 (Saratoga, Calif.), said AMD is betting that the X86 architecture can be extended at least for the next decade, "which is a lifetime in this industry.

"If Alpha, AMD and Itanium all come in at roughly equal performance, then AMD will have the advantage because it will be superior at 32-bit [IA-32] processing," Brookwood said. "Then they can say, 'you get 64 bits for free.' Intel has defined a radical path, while AMD has taken an evolutionary approach, and many people prefer the evolutionary way because it is safer."

Dit verhaaltje lezen we uit bij EETimes.

Ik zag bij Voodoo Extreme deze leuke posting van Bill Ball (Creative ventje) in de Creative nieuwsgroepen:

I am waiting for Glaze3D to solve all the world's graphics problems. I've been waiting for years. When a competitor (I really shouldn't call them that) who does not have a product and has never delivered one before starts criticizing what someone else has done, you need to have a little more critical eye there, Bob. Yes, DDR will be faster - that's why we are making it - but the Annihilator meets the stated specs. Peak fill rate can hit 480Mpixels/second. You need to understand that the way the industry quote the spec, it is peak, not sustained. It's sort of like benchmarking with vsync off to see what the maximum potential of the card is.
--

Bill Ball
Senior Technical Marketing Specialist
Graphics and Video Products
Creative Labs, Inc.

Die zijn dus duidelijk geïrriteerd , maar echt veel zinnigs heeft-ie niet te vertellen (<= graag inhoudelijk argumentatie waarom Bitboys dom zijn).

3dfx kan op zoek gaan naar een nieuwe CEO (Chief Executive nogwat), want meneer Gregory Ballard is tot inkeer gekomen dat er leukere dingen bestaan dan 3dfx-CEOotje spelen. Hier de info van Voodoo Extreme:

The Board of Directors announced that an immediate search would begin for his successor.

"I have had an extraordinary three years at 3dfx, in which sales have grown from almost nothing to an annualized revenue rate of over $400 million," said L. Gregory Ballard. "During this time we have created a dominant worldwide brand and have been the consistent leader at retail. We have put in place a strategy and management team that will solidify our leadership position.

"I truly believe that the challenges in this next phase of the Company's growth will be more technical than marketing and strategic and that 3dfx can benefit from the fresh perspective that a new CEO can bring," he added. "3dfx has a great future, and I look forward to watching its progress as an investor."

"Greg has contributed greatly to the success of the Company, and we are sad to see him leave," said Gordon Campbell, founder and chairman of 3dfx Interactive, Inc., on behalf of the Board of Directors. "The Board will take this opportunity to bring in an executive to continue the exceptional growth that 3dfx has enjoyed. I have pledged my time and efforts to seeing that the transition is smooth and causes no disruption to the conduct of our growing business."

Ballard, with Gordon Campbell, who is also managing director of TechFarm, will organize and direct a search committee from the 3dfx Board of Directors to find his replacement.

3DGPU.com heeft een aantal Quake3 GeForce screenshots gepost, waarin de blije gevolgen van een hogere poly count naar voren worden gebracht. Eén van de screenshots heb ik hieronder samengeplakt. Het verschil bij deze opgefrisde curves lijkt me best wel heel erg duidelijk:

Andy van BXBoards heeft een review van het Asus K7M moederbord op z'n site geparkeerd. Hij is erg positief over de plank, vooral vanwege de overclocking features:

For the first time on an Athlon board, we get overclocking features worthy of the name. The AMI BIOS allows for the selection of a huge range of bus speeds, including 90 and 95 Mhz. At 100Mhz and beyond, right up to 125Mhz, bus speeds are selectable in 1Mhz intervals. 133Mhz, 140 and 150Mhz are also supported. Testing revealed that the board was only 100% stable when bus overclocked up to 110Mhz. It was possible to get Winstone 99 results at 111 and 112Mhz, and to boot at 115Mhz, but its not quite stable enough. Close but no cigar. The bus overclocking is welcome, and allows for quite a performance increase. While the Athlon can be modified internally by those confident with a soldering iron to support higher multipliers, the risk of damage to the CPU with be off-putting to casual overclockers. 110Mhz gives a nice boost, and the Athlon running at 5 x 110 was incredibly quick and outpaced a Pentium III @ 550/110 by a huge margin. The Athlon really is an incredibly nice bit of processing kit.

Voltage tweaking is supported. VCore can be left at 1.6v default, or tweaked in 0.1v intervals from 1.3v up to 2.0v. Our failures to overclock past 110Mhz seem to be a "feature" of the AMD 751 chip, as the Athlon itself should be capable of at least 650Mhz, such is yield coming from AMD's FAB25 site in Austin, Texas right now.

Eerder behaalde Lost Circuits vergelijkbare resultaten. Erg vreemd dat-ie blijft steken op 110MHz.